Matt Steinglass warms to Romney:
My bet is that Mitt Romney wins the nomination, and at the moment, barring a substantial economic recovery, I'd give him better than even odds of winning the election as well. I suspect that Mr Romney is an empty shell without a soul, but he's a pretty smart empty shell without a soul, and I don't really subscribe to the idea that a candidate needs a deep core of authenticity in order to be a successful political official.
Within the category "Republican politicians", the fact that Mr Romney apparently lacks any firm ideological convictions seems to me a blessing rather than a curse. A Romney presidency would be unlikely to feature the spectacle of Congress threatening to destroy America's AAA credit rating in order to score political points, and my guess is that it would make Barack Obama's health-care reforms permanent, with some sort of fig-leaf adjustments that would allow Mr Romney to claim he had undone the hated ObamaCare and replaced it with a Republican alternative that is substantially the same.
The Dish 